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Militia Drop Their Equipment
A HAM 3 feature allows Militia to drop their carried equipment when killed. Whether equipment is dropped (and how much of it is dropped) depends on several conditions and settings. History One of the greatest frustrations in JA2 1.13 is that militia, while mildly useful, have a tendency to pick up equipment from the ground. This would be a good thing, as they tend to pick up weapons that are better than the ones they are carrying, and so they become better in combat. However, there are two major problems with this: #You cannot tell Militia not to pick up weapons, neither can you specify which weapons should or shouldn't be picked up. The result is that Militia sometimes pick up good equipment dropped from enemies before you can pick it up yourself! This can be exceptionally annoying if the "Enemies Drop All" option is disabled, because when an enemy finally drops a good weapon you want for your mercs, a stupid Militiaman might pick that weapon up and never give it back. #Militia equipment is randomized every time the sector is loaded. This means that even if a militia member has picked up a good weapon and has become better in combat, this advantage may easily disappear the next time this militia appears in battle, so a good weapon may have been lost forever. Some of us have resorted to try and kill the militiaman to get a good item back. Unfortunately, this does nothing, because militia will never drop any of their equipment when they are killed. The logical reasoning behind this is that players might be tempted to kill their own militia to gather up their weapons. While this is indeed a possible caveat, killing militia has an extremely negative effect on loyalty in your liberated cities, and the equipment they drop might not even be worth the amount of money you'd spent on training those militia. Therefore, while the possible exploit is visible, it hardly makes sense at all. HAM 2.8 - Militia Drops With this new feature turned on, militia who get themselves killed (which happens too often) will actually drop some or all of their equipment on the ground. There are two things that control how this behaves. Conditions for Militia Drops HAM's INI setting allows two different conditions for Militia drops. INI Condition The first setting can be called "Always Drop". If this setting is used, any Militia who dies is eligible* to drop their equipment. The second setting is meant to avoid exploiting militia for their equipment by killing them. When this setting is used, Militia are only eligible* to drop their equipment if they were NOT killed by the player's mercs. You cannot kill militia yourself to gather up their equipment. Drop All Condition The other condition for Militia Drops is found in the in-game Preferences menu, and is called "Enemies Drop All". This option determines whether dead enemies drop all of their equipment, or whether they only drop part (or none) of it randomly. When a militia is set as Eligible to Drop (see "INI Condition", above), the amount of equipment they drop is based on the same option as enemies. If enemies are set to drop all of their equipment, so will dead militia. Otherwise, Militia will drop only part (or none) of their equipment. INI Settings One HAM setting controls whether Militia are eligible to drop their equipment when they die. MILITIA_DROP_EQUIPMENT Category:Features Category:HAM Militia Category:Combat Features